Category Archives: Web Development

Using Twitter and Facebook for Search Engine Optimisation

Posted on August 14, 2010

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last couple of years, you’ve probably heard of Twitter. If you’re a business in Bath or Bristol and have had any contact with a web design or web development company they’ve … Continue reading →

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Learning from the Magento core…

Posted on August 10, 2010

Learning any framework is complex. Learning one as labyrinthine as used by Magento e-Commerce is positively painful. So why not learn from the people who programmed the system? When you are in the Administration interface, note down the url path … Continue reading →

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Fancy a drop of brandy?

Posted on August 9, 2010

Just had a fascinating morning getting a crash course in brandies. A local business in Bradford on Avon, Brandyclassics, have asked me to look at ways of improving the search engine performance of their current e-Commerce website. They sell vintage single … Continue reading →

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Exporting data from Magento

Posted on August 9, 2010

Often when using web applications it’s quicker to export any required data directly from the database using SQL queries. Magento e-Commerce is a very different beast, due to the fact that much of the important data is stored using the … Continue reading →

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Finally – the death of PHP4…

Posted on August 6, 2010

Wordpress 3.2 will only be supported on servers running PHP 5.2 What does this mean for the evolution of PHP as a language? Continue reading →

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SEO basics – choosing good urls for higher Google position

Posted on July 27, 2010

Search engines use incredibly complex algorithms to calculate what pages should be returned when you search for a given term. The exact algorithms are closing guarded secrets, but search engine optimisation experts have been able to infer some basics rules … Continue reading →

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Using code hints in Magento e-Commerce templates…

Posted on July 21, 2010

When you’re using a complex web application like Magento or WordPress it’s a real struggle to remember all the functions, classes and methods that are available to you in the template files. And this means endless trips back to the … Continue reading →

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Enforced discipline when creating Magento Themes

Posted on July 20, 2010

Magento is a beast of an eCommerce platform. It has a rigid set of conventions for the location and name of your theme files. And your theme should never overwrite any of the base installation that Magento creates. So how … Continue reading →

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So what is a WordPress “Theme”?

Posted on July 19, 2010

You’ve probably heard of CMSes and Blogging software and you’ve probably heard that it’s free to download and use on your website. So why does your designer of developer want to charge you for creating a website using Wordpress? Continue reading →

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Avoiding comment spam in WordPress

Posted on July 16, 2010

By default, WordPress is set to approve comments automatically from people who have previously had a comment approved. Ever wondered why seemingly random people leave comments on your blog saying things like “Hi, I found your blog really interesting”? There … Continue reading →

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